Sheep on the Hill

First of all, we'd like to thank you all for your support over the past year and to wish you a peaceful and happy Christmas.
I've just finished wrapping the presents, the baking is done and it's Christmas eve as I write this. I'm looking forward to a family BBQ followed by a relaxing holiday.
Now back to the photo, my woolly friends were in a paddock just up the river from our country hut/cottage and were watching me closely as I walked up the hill towards them.  I think these ones are used to being handled as they aren't as flighty as sheep usually are.

I processed the photo when were were still trialling the new autumn Flypapers, and at that stage they had names like "November 10 gold" and "messy" and as we've said before, it's when we finally come to give them their proper names that they take on personalities, so to speak.

Processing was fairly simple in this case, I only used two textures both from the new Autumn Painterly Pack.
Demi Jour @ soft light 100% blurred and masked from the sky using a graduated mask (this layer was more for the tone than the texture. )
Capability Brown @ Soft Light 100%
I then merged visible and to increase contrast used
Nik Efex Contrast colour range filter.
and it was done!
See it slightly larger on Flickr

Autumn Painterly Pack

40 rectangular (4000 by 5000 px) Textures 

$40

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Roman bridge into mist

Welcome to the Autumn seasons textured images! Here's another from my misty morning set, our local ancient Roman bridge into our little old Beziers! Of our several crossings Its my favorite bridge, its both narrow and winding and takes just one lane of light traffic.
Its also historic as its the bridge that the medieval army of crusaders crossed to slaughter most of the Cities inhabitants kicking off the start of the bloody Albigensian Crusade, all of which was chronicled in Kate Mosse's recent blockbuster mystery novel, Labyrinth which was recently filmed in our area for a big UK based studio TV mini series, due out next year!

The image was shot in portrait format, the excess sky being cropped off the top, which might be very useful negative space if used as say, a book cover for Getty, but for its pure drama, I felt this was the right crop.

There are two post processed versions, this is the final darker one, the other is much paler and more ethereal but also stands on its own.
In this new rectangular Autumnal set we used many French names to enhance its seasonal perfumed motif, here I used just two, Quelques Fleurs - meaning, some flowers. And Contre Jour, meaning fittingly, against the light!

Quelques Fleurs - Soft Light @ 45%

Contre Jour - Overlay @ 100%

I then flattened the image and was happy with it, but decided to push the processing by doubling up the image and used Multiply to beef up the image and bring out the blue tones in the sky.

Autumn Painterly Pack

40 rectangular (4000 by 5000 px) Textures 

$40

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

New Autumn Texture Pack Launch!

Click Here for a bigger, landscape view

Just in time for Christmas we launch our new Autumn Painterly Set, after several weeks of intensive shooting and creating, we now proudly unveil our selection box of treats!
For our third painterly launch we seamlessly move into the Autumn season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Join us on a fragrant walk through majestic country estates, where misty mornings mingle with soft sun on antique stone and Byzantine colours merge with swirling atmospheric incense . Stately aromatic scents were our muse for this autumnal set, spiced with classical timeless French named perfumes inspired by Patrick Suskind's novel 'Perfume'. More inspiration was derived from country house gardens and their famous creators pulling together this seasons aromatic and historical assault on the senses!

The Science bit!
These softer, smoother and, we hope, easier to use textures are now in the same larger landscape format as our evergreen Antique Edges of 4000 x 5000 pixels, giving an extra 20% approx acreage and textural value for money!
Shot using a professional full chip camera, so there is no need to worry about image quality with our new, bigger sizes!

Over the next few holiday weeks we'll be posting our full texture recipes here on the blog and will show the new pack in use along with our classic textures!
Textural Seasons Greetings!!

Autumn Painterly Pack

40 rectangular (4000 by 5000 px) Textures 

$40

For downloads please click the add to cart button, a download code will be sent to you on payment.Please note that this is big file so the download may take a while perhaps a coffee break would be a good idea while you're downloading. However, reported downloads can take as little as 4 mins with a high speed server!

The autumn textures are high quality,  4000 by 5000 px at 300dpi and can be used for your personal or commercial work. All our textures can be used in any editing programme that supports the use of layers, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Gimp etc 

Textures in the pack: Ambergris, Ambrosia, Ancient Stucco, Angelique Glace, Aotea Mist, Aquaflore, Artemisia Silver, Balsam, Capability Brown,  Chatsworth,Contre Jour,  Demi Jour, Eau de Giverny, Fleurette Occitane, Gertrude Jekyll, Greystoke, Hampton, Hidcote, l'ocean bleu, l'oxygene, Neroli Roc, Nuage Chantilly, Nuit, Oakmoss, Orris, Ozone Mist, Quelques Flerus, Sauvage Byzantine, Sissinghurst, Solsbury Hill, Stonehenge, Stucco Lite, Styrax, Tapis Vert,  Versailles,  Vetiver, Vieux Gris, Vita, Weta, Xeyrus.

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Voyage through canal mist

A big thanks to Ellen for her kind texture feature on dpreview
and a warm welcome to their visiting fans!

Once again its the time of year for my favorite misty, foggy mornings in the Mediterranean! As soon as I open my shutters and spy mist outside, I need to work fast, as the sun tends to burn it off soon after 9 am.
This time I just drove to the edge of town to our famous Canal du Midi, which connects the Atlantic on the west coast to our local oyster beds at Sete edging the French Mediterranean. This part of the canal is the last high point before the famous series of ancient locks take barges and pleasure boats down to sea level and just a few miles on to the salt water Oyster lagoons and open seas. Thus this stretch of canal is very wide for the high season boat jams, as only a few can be taken down to sea level at the same time.

One great thing I discovered this week from Flickr was how good the Camera Raw program is for getting rid of Chromatic Aberration, I tend to see it mostly on tree branches with pale skies behind at the edges of images, when pushing the image in photoshop using the CS5 HDR program these effects are multiplied tenfold and its always been a problem even with expensive lenses such as my 24-105mm canon all-rounder lens. However after sorting this out in camera raw, I can now carry on without those nasty problem effects!

The base image has already been treated in Nik Color Efex pro-4 - Contrast color range - with the slider moved towards the red end of the spectrum, this zings up the leaves and grass, helping to wake-up the images full potential.

I then thought I'd try the Painterly textures, as mist is often a drab grey colour, it needed some nice pastel warm tones to help balance the bright colour from the right hand side of the image.
When using textures on mist its a good idea not to use a hard setting like 'Overlay' as this can make your mist disappear!
So I suggest Soft Light is used on Mist;

Brushed Rose - Soft Light @ 100% Flipped Horizontally and vertically
Pantheon Stone - Soft Light @ 85%

After which, to give the image a point of focus, I used Nik Color Efex pro-4 - Darken/Lighten Center, the lightest point of interest over the line of tree trunks.

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Chasing the wind

Its always nice to wake up and find another one of your babies gracing
a published book cover! Here's today's, an American thriller,
heavily textured with our flypaper painterly textures.
Its just a preview copy as its not yet out, so I expect their colours will hopefully not be as muddled as this one with its quick run though our preferred Nik Color Bi Filters.
I'm reprinting the original recipe from this summer but we'll have a brand new image and recipe shortly!
Book synopsis and pre-sales Amazon

I'm no stalker, but when I see a great silhouette, and I'm armed with a camera, I will sometimes move just a few tiny paces to try to get a secret shot!

Our narrow medieval streets are perfect for this type of shot, though for the same reason our streets are often too shaded and thus too dark, and don't even get me started on my pet hate, parked cars! Here I used the trusty Lensbaby once more, lens wide open, at F1; no aperture. It was around 5pm, before the sun wasn't too low but also not directly overhead.

As we've been asked, Ive tried to recreate how I processed, step by step, and why I chose the textures used.

To the base image, to add more definition, I first slightly cross processed it and used a slight vignette darkening the edges. You can do this simply with free photoshop actions

To start with texturing I wanted to add more light. For my recent lensbaby shots I like to use the new Opal texture, here I used it twice, then I wanted to add a more beefy texture and darken the sky, I chose Tempest Sea, flipped vertically.
I loved the painterly/scratchy effect on the blue scaffolding covers brought by this texture, but found the overall blue a little too bright/fruity. So another favorite texture was pulled out, Newt to help tone down, which was okay but still not quite there, so I clicked it off. Finally I tried Swans Way for the first time, as I liked the look of that billowing canvas like movement this texture suggests, and Wow, happy days! It toned down the blue perfectly and pulled it all together and added a dramatic cracked grunge!

It was almost finished but decided there was now just a bit too much street clutter which the textures had highlighted.
So I clone tooled out a red road sign on the right, and a pale board on the left under the scaffolding, both clearly visible on the raw base image.

Opal - Overlay @ 74 % softly brushed from bottom edge and tot of sky
Opal - Overlay @ 100 % softly brushed from bottom edge and all of sky and right building
Tempest Sea - Overlay @ 45% Flipped vertically
Swans Way - Soft Light @ 100%

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page

Looking North

Another photo of my favourite beach, taken on a warmer and sunnier day than the previous photo of it I posted here.  I was lucky that I managed to catch a passing gull when I snapped this.
Onto the  processing...
Beau Linge Paysage @ Soft Light 13% masked from the lower portion of the photo
Evening Veil @ Soft Light 100%
Oxford Parchment @ Soft light 100% masked from the upper portion of the photo
Nik pro contrast (though you could use curves) to increase the contrast of the sea. I masked this from the lower portion.
Villa Adriana @ Overlay 92% masked from the central portion)
Beau Linge Paysage and Villa Adriana are from the SpringPainterly pack, Oxford Parchment and Evening Veil are from the Summer Painterly Pack

See it larger on Flickr

Spring Painterly Pack

40 Large Textures (38 square and two huge rectangles) for only

$40

Summer Painterly Pack

36 large textures for only $40

Complete Flypaper Package

 Texboxes 1&2, Fly edges, Spring, Summer and Autumn painterly

$220

Flypaper Triple Combo Deal
$100 for Tex Box One and Two and the Fly Edges

Combo Pack Offer

Only $65 for Tex Box One and  Tex Box Two

Fly Edges Pack

Only $40

See all our packs and deals on one Page